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Unfortunately, this news piece is not related to our illustrious editor, but a demo release of a new game called Milk, No Sugar, which is currently being developed by Jonathan Cauldwell for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. It's a vertically scrolling shoot-'em-up game, which is looking rather smooth. Unlike some other games of this type, including Jonathan's earlier wild-west-themed Dead Or Alive, written in 1995, it speeds up as you move the armoured space craft forward (and vice versa when the opposite is applied to the joystick), and at the moment, waves of mutant Polo mints will head your way in order to obliterate you.

Everything here is up to Jonathan's typical standards, but I expect some twists and extras in the final version. Check out the preview by heading over to his personal website at tinyurl.com/j-cauldwell

And in related news, Jonathan has reworked some of his classic games for inclusion on Elite System's ZX Spectrum Collection volume one to fourteen, available for Apples iPhone and iPad. I'm not someone who owns any Apple technology, so I can't test Elite's interface out for myself, but Jonathan has informed me that there are versions of some of his best - Quantum Gardening, Egghead IV: Egghead Entertains, Egghead Round The Med, plus all new and improved versions of Loco Bingo, Slubberdegullion and Gamex: The Games Exchange.

I'm not sure whether these new versions will appear on real cassette media at some point, but for those with the required tech, check out tinyurl.com/Elite-Speccy-Collection

Sinclair ZX81 enthusiasts now have the ultimate upgrade for the little black box of tricks, thanks to RWAP Software and the ZXpand hardware, which plugs into the back of the machine and provides up to 32KB of RAM and a slot for an SD/MMC to be plugged in, so that you can quickly and easily load your favourite software without fiddling about with cassette tape players to get the volume just in the right place. Even better, you may save your programs to an SD/MMC card too, so this alone makes it the ideal shuttle device between the monochrome beast and a modern PC.

Other features include configurable RAM for compatibility with the various high-resolution graphics schemes, a new ROM adding various commands and a reset button too, saving further wear and tear on your aging power input. Prices are yet to be announced, but the first one off the production line has been sold already, so for more information, head over to www.rwapsoftware.co.uk.

Card games have been a part of Commodore gaming since the famous PET had the four symbols (hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades) in its 8-bit ASCII-compatible character set, and now there's a new dual release for the VIC-20 and C64 called CardSwipe, a rather simple game in which you're given four cards to collect (the face cards: jack, queen, king and ace) from a 4 x 4 matrix allowing four players to join in.

It's a game of chance, because obtaining a card from the matrix is down to your dice roll; should your die match the available card, then you may take it, provided that you don't already have it in your tray. The winner is the first to fill all of the required spaces in the tray. To obtain this software, head to cardswipe.codeplex.com